A 17-year-old deliberately drove into a Wycombe moped driver and caused a crash that ended his life, a court has heard.
Sam Stephen Cripps, now aged 20, is on trial accused of causing the death by dangerous driving of 19-year-old Zaide Sandy, from High Wycombe, in a crash on the A355 Amersham Road, Beaconsfield, on May 5, 2019.
Opening the trial at Aylesbury Crown Court on Monday, prosecutor Alan Blake told the jury that Cripps, who was only 17 at the time of the crash, had “beef” with the victim.
The court heard how just before the crash, which took place at around 10.50pm, Cripps had been driving inches behind Mr Sandy. Mr Blake said the defendant wanted to make the victim crash to “intimidate him” or “teach him a lesson.”
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Cripps has pleaded not guilty to charges of causing death by dangerous driving and causing death by careless driving.
Mr Blake said: “The collision occurred as a result of dangerous driving from Mr Cripps who was driving at excessive speed.
“Rather than slow his vehicle, which he had space to do, he drove so close to the moped that he deliberately or recklessly made contact with the rear of it causing it to lose control.
“He drove right up behind the moped either to nudge him off to teach him a lesson or to intimate him.”
The court heard from the prosecutor how on the night of the crash Mr Sandy and four of his friends – Mr Sandy on the moped and his friends in a black Ford Fiesta – had driven from Wycombe to Beaconsfield that evening.
When they were in Amersham Road, the group became aware of a white Vauxhall Corsa which was being driven by Cripps.
The prosecutor told the court that Cripps and the group of boys knew each other, and that there was a history between them.
He said: “Sam Cripps was later to describe it as some ‘beef’ between Wycombe boys and Slough boys which had arisen when he changed school some years before and had resulted in altercations in which he said that he had been the victim."
Addressing the jury, he added: “You will want to consider how much any ‘bad blood’ is relevant to the events of that evening and to both the driving of the defendant at the time of the collision and his reaction to it.”
The court heard that while driving along Amersham Road, Mr Sandy overtook the white car – but the white car started following the moped very closely.
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